102 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



his teeth and chaws. Now when he is lulled as it 

 were fast asleep with this pleasure and content- 

 ment of his ; the rat of India, or ichneumon, spieth 

 his vantage, and seeing him lye thus broad gaping, 

 whippeth into his mouth, and shooteth himselfe 

 downe his throat as quicke as an arrow, and then 

 gnaweth a hole through his belly, and so killeth 



Scaliger, somewhat scandalized that Pliny had 

 made the bird a wren, was of opinion that it 

 should be described ; and the trochilus then came 

 out of the size of a thrush, with an acute crested 

 feather, which it had the power of erecting, so as 

 to prick the palate of the crocodile if he should 

 close his jaws and shut her in. Aldrovand backs 

 this doctrine by a reference to Leo's work on 

 Africa, who declares that he saw on the banks of 

 islands in the middle of the Nile crocodiles sun- 

 ning themselves, and birds, about the size of a 

 thrush, flitting about them ; but after a short 

 space the birds flew away. His inquiries were 

 answered by a statement that portions of the fishes 

 and other animals on. which the crocodile feeds 

 stick about his teeth and breed worms, to his 

 great torment. The birds, perceiving the worms 

 when the crocodile gapes, come to feed upon them. 

 But the crocodile, as soon as he finds that all the 

 worms are eaten up, closes his mouth, and at- 

 tempts to swallow the bird that has entered, but, 

 being wounded by the sharp spine with which the 

 head of the bird is armed, gapes again and sets 

 the winged prisoner free. 



The narrative of Herodotus has received cor- 

 roboration from the pen of the accomplished author 

 of Visits to Monasteries in the Levant.^ 



I will relate (says Mr. Curzon, in that amusing 

 and interesting book) a fact in natural history 

 which I was fortunate enough to witness, and 

 which, although it is mentioned so long ago as the 

 times of Herodotus, has not, I believe, been often 

 observed since : indeed, I have never met with any 

 traveller who has himself seen such an occur- 

 rence. 



I had always a strong predilection for crocodile- 

 shooting, and had destroyed several of these dragons 

 of the waters. On one occasion I saw, a long way 

 off, a large one, twelve or fifteen feet long, lying 

 asleep under a perpendicular bank, about ten feet 

 high, on the margin of the river. I stopped the 

 boat at some distance ; and noting the place as well 

 as I could, I took a circuit inland, and came down 

 cautiously to the top of the bank, whence with a 

 heavy rifle I made sure of my ugly game. I had 

 already cut off his head in my imagination, and was 

 considering whether it should be stuffed with its 

 mouth open or shut. I peeped over the bank ; 

 there he was within ten feet of the sight of the 

 rifle. I was on the point of firing at his eye, when 

 I observed that he was attended by a bird called a 

 zic-zac. It is of the plover species, of a grayish 

 color, and as large as a small pigeon. 



The bird was walking up and down close to the 

 crocodile's nose. I suppose I moved, for suddenly 

 it saw me, and instead of flying away, as any re- 

 spectable bird would have done, he jumped up 

 about a foot from the ground, screamed " Zic-zac ! 



* Holland's Pliny. t London : John Murray. 1849. 



zic-zac!" with all the powers of his voice, ind 

 dashed himself against the crocodile's face two or 

 three times. The great beast started up, and im- 

 mediately spying his danger, made a jump into the 

 air, and, dashing into the water with a splash which 

 covered me with mud, he dived into the river and 

 disappeared. The zic-zac to my increased admira- 

 tion proud, apparently, of having saved his friend 

 remained walking up and' down, uttering his ery, 

 as I thought, with an exulting voice, and standing 

 every now and then on the tips of his toes in a con- 

 ceited manner, which made me justly angry with 

 his impertinence. After having waited in vain for 

 some time, to see whether the crocodile would come 

 out again, I got up from the bank where I was ly- 

 ing, threw a clod of earth at the zic-zac, and came 

 back to the boat, feeling some consolation for the 

 loss of my game in having witnessed a circumstance 

 the truth of which has been disputed by several 

 writers on natural history. 



The crocodile's protector was actuated, doubt- 

 less, by that self-interest which governs so many 

 social compacts ; and Herodotus, when he de- 

 scribes the bird as freeing the crocodile from his 

 troublesome parasites, only records an alliance 

 which is far from uncommon in the history of an- 

 imals. To say nothing of the familiar instances 

 of the daws, magpies, and starlings, that attend 

 upon our sheep and horned cattle, there are more 

 close alliances founded on a reciprocity of benefits. 

 Such, among the warm-blooded vertebrated ani- 

 mals, is the connection between the Buphaga 

 erythrohyncha the beef-eater of the English, the 

 pique-bceuf of the French and the oxen, camels, 

 and antelopes, which it frees from the larva that 

 burrow in their hides, for which service its feet 

 and beak are admirably adapted the feet, armed 

 with strong claws, affording a firm hold on the 

 back of the animal, and the beak, fashioned so as 

 to dig and extract the maggots as neatly as an in- 

 strument combining the qualities of a lancet and 

 forceps, in skilful surgical hands, could perform 

 the operation. Such are the rhinoceros birds 

 mentioned by Mr. Gumming. Even among the 

 molluscous animals we have the association of the 

 pinna and the crab. 



The rhinoceros birds were just as attentive to 

 their charge as the guard which deprived Mr. 

 Curzon of his " ugly game." A native had in- 

 formed Mr. Gumming that a white rhinoceros was 

 lying asleep in thick cover, and he accompanied 

 his guide to the spot. The rhinoceros was lying 

 asleep beneath a shady tree, and his appearance 

 reminded Mr. Gumming of an enormous hog. 

 The beast kept constantly flapping his ears, which, 

 he says, rhinoceroses invariably do when sleeping. 

 But before he could reach the proper distance to 

 fire, several rhinoceros birds by which he was at- 

 tended warned him of his impending danger by 

 sticking their bills into his ear, and uttering their 

 harsh, grating cry. Thus aroused, he suddenly 

 sprang to his feet, crashed away through the jun- 

 gle at a rapid rate, and Mr. Gumming saw him 

 no more. But it appears that it is not to the 

 rhinoceros alone that these guardians do good 

 service. 



